He had learned to value and love the Bible, and owed his moral culture to it. Its events and symbols were deeply stamped upon him, so without being a pietist he was greatly moved at the scoffing spirit toward it which he met at the university. From youth he had stood on good terms with God, and at times he had felt that he had some things to forgive God for not having given better assistance to his infinite good-will. Under all this influence he turned to cabalism and became interested in crystals and the microcosm and macrocosm, and fell into the habit of despair over what he had been and believed just before. He conceived a kind of hermetical or neoplatonic godhead creating in more and more eccentric circles, until the last, which rose in contradiction, was Lucifer to whom creation was committed. He first of all imagined in detail an angelic host, and finally a whole theology was wrought out _in petto_. He used a gilt ornamented music-stand as a kind of altar with fumigating pastils for incense, where each morning God was approached by offerings until one day a conflagration put a sudden end to these celebrations. Hans Anderson,[48] the son of a poor shoemaker, taught in a charity school at the dawn of puberty; vividly animated Bible stories from pictures painted on the wall; was dreamy and absent-minded; told continued stories to his mates; at confirmation vowed he would be famous and finally, at fourteen, left home for Copenhagen, where he was violently stage-struck and worked his way from friendship with the bill-poster to the stage as page, shepherd, etc.; called on a famous dancer, who scorned him, and then, feeling that he had no one but God to depend on, prayed earnestly and often. For nearly a year, until his voice broke, he was a fine singer. He wet with his tears the eyes of a portrait of a heartless man that he might feel for him. He played with a puppet theater and took a childish delight in decking the characters with gay remnants that he begged from shops; wrote several plays which no one would accept; stole into an empty theater one New Year's day to pray aloud on the middle of the stage; shouted with joy; hugged and kissed a beech-tree till people thought him insane; abhorred the thought of apprenticeship to Latin as he did to that of a trade, which was a constant danger; and was one of the most dreamy and sentimental, and by spells religious and prayerful, of youth.